Safety Net
by July Storms
Summary: The dirty clothes don't bother him, not on their own. What bothers him is—and if he's honest with himself, he hates the fact that he feels this way, because he knows this means he cares, and caring is dangerous and so very fucking stupid—the fact that Hange isn't herself. (Levihan.)


**Safety Net**

**Prompt**: Hange wears Levi's shirt.

**Notes**: For Kehp/Forced Simile for her birthday today! If you haven't read her 'fic _City Comma State_ then I highly suggest you check it out! (It's adorable and feelsy on the happy side of the spectrum.) Anyway, this is mostly an emotional 'fic; there's no real plot and nothing really happens. It's also an experiment in terms of writing Hange and Levi's relationship. (Oh, and if you spot my shitty pun you get a cookie.) Also thanks to Caitlin for looking this over for me earlier!

* * *

Hange tries not to let her emotions show—not the real ones, anyway, not the _deep_ emotions, the kind that might actually tell other people about her, about how she's feeling, about what she's lost or who she loves. Levi respects that about her because she's an emotional person by nature; she cares too much about the dumbest shit, and because of that she's easily hurt. It's almost sad how efficiently she covers it up in the end, how simple it is for her to maintain her emotional personality while still closing parts of herself off from the world.

Over the years, they've become friends, but they're balancing the wire and falling onto the side that says they might be something more. Levi's not sure what to call what they have, and he doesn't think they need to put a name to it, not yet; naming shit is what gets it taken away from you, after all. That's what experience has taught him.

The Survey Corps returned to HQ three days ago, but Hange hasn't slept at all. She goes back to her room every night, but over breakfast the next morning she pushes her food around and sighs a lot and the dark circles under her eyes make her look unnervingly fragile.

Tonight, she comes to Levi. She doesn't explain herself. He supposes it doesn't matter, anyway. They don't speak a lot; they don't have to. Everyone knows what's bothering Hange: Mike is dead. Hange had known it was a possibility, of course, but… Well, after living in the Corps with someone for more than six years, he supposes it's easy to forget that death looms around every goddamned corner. Even smart people like Hange forget, and allow themselves to care too much.

It's not just Mike, though: Mike's entire squad is dead, and Erwin lost an arm; Hange failed to protect Eren and Ymir and injured herself badly enough that she couldn't even help retrieve them when backup arrived.

(Erwin said that she'd barely been able to crawl.)

He feels something for her, then, when she stands awkwardly in his doorway looking lost and tired and red-eyed. Her hair's wet and tangled, and she didn't bother to change into something clean because she's wearing the same clothes she's been wearing for the last two days; the stain on her pants tells him that much.

The dirty clothes don't bother him, not on their own. What bothers him is—and if he's honest with himself, he hates the fact that he feels this way, because he knows this means he cares, and caring is dangerous and so very fucking _stupid_—the fact that Hange isn't herself. She's a bit sloppy and sometimes scatterbrained; she forgets the dumbest shit and remembers things that are completely useless, like when his fucking _birthday_ is—but she's never forgotten to change into clean clothes after she bothers to shower, and she's never looked so completely…

(Spiritless, he supposes. Like she wants to give up.)

He takes her hand, pulls her into his room, and closes his door. He doesn't tell her she's a mess because he knows that she knows that much, if nothing else. She probably has no idea why she even came to him, of all people, but Levi knows; he can put her back together. Even he isn't sure how that works, but he usually says and does the right things. Nothing he does or says can bring Mike back, though, or Erwin's arm, and he sure as hell can't heal the burns still red and angry across Hange's face and neck, but there are things he _can_ do.

So he does his best: hands her a clean nightshirt and ignores the fact that she gets changed in front of him as if she doesn't even recognize that he's there, combs out her hair as she sits quietly on the edge of his bed, tucks her into his own bed, blankets up to her chin before he finishes up his paperwork and then changes his own clothes to sleep. He joins her in his bed even though he's not tired, even though he hardly sleeps at all anymore.

She probably just wants someone there, and he can be that person.

(He _wants_ to be that person.)

But Hange doesn't roll toward him; she doesn't smile at him or say anything; she doesn't even seek the most basic form of comfort from him even though she normally has no reservations about throwing her arms around him and making a big fuss. He's unsure of what it is he's supposed to do now that he's brushed out her hair and gotten her into something proper to wear to sleep. He decides to leave it up to her; she's the only one who can really know what she wants or needs, anyway, but he's hardly closed his eyes when he hears her take in a breath that's too shaky to belong to someone resting peacefully.

He looks at her, then, but her eyes are closed and she's trying to be quiet, pressing a sleeve of her borrowed shirt to her face to wipe away tears, and he's not sure if she's doing it because she's embarrassed or because she doesn't want to disturb him, or if she's just trying not to make a mess of his linens—as if he actually cares about things that can be washed in the morning.

He watches her for a moment, just watches her, but he finds it too hard to breathe when she's doing that. She looks lonely and there's nothing about it that doesn't look wrong to him.

(He's right fucking _here_, after all.)

Her hands are tucked up into the long sleeves of the shirt she's wearing, but he slips his hand inside and finds hers; he doesn't quite hold her hand—he just brushes his fingers against hers, an invitation she can accept if she wants to.

He doesn't call her Hange because that's her own little way of shutting people out; he's not going to let her turn into Erwin, keeping people at arm's length at every single opportunity, closing doors and windows and making all of her emotions a fucking one-way street. He's not going to let her shut _him_ out; not this time, not in this way, and certainly not when she needs to be reminded that she's a human being with a name and feelings and there is someone out there, at least one person left, now, who knows this about her.

So he calls her, "Zoë," and that's when the dam breaks.

Her tears don't get louder—she stays quiet, but that's when she lets go and stops trying to hold it in. That's when she takes his hand and squeezes it like she's trying to keep herself fucking anchored to _something_, and he wishes she had something better than him, but if he's all she's got, well, at least she's got _someone_.

The next thing he knows, her face is in his shoulder, and she's curled up like she's scared or afraid, and maybe she _is_—maybe they _all_ are, in their own ways—but he still hates it, because he's seen Hange happy and sad, angry and mellow, but he's never really seen her quite like _this_:

(He wonders if it's because _this_ is Zoë, the part of herself she locks away.)

He doesn't really trust himself to speak right now, not with her crying and him likely to say something stupid to make it worse, but he makes an effort not to be awkward; for the first time in a long time, the thought of not being sufficient for another person doesn't sit well in his gut, and he's overly conscious of how he puts an arm around her, how he pulls her against him; it's all slow and clumsy and _stupid_, but he tries anyway because he doesn't know what else to do for her, not when she needs more than she usually asks for from him.

Levi wants to say stupid shit like, "I've got you," or, "I'm here," or whatever it is that people are supposed to say when they're comforting someone they care about, but he can't make himself say the words, because it'll only hurt her if one day it's just not true anymore. He can only think the general thought at her and hope she understands that he feels as he does—that he knows that she wants everyone else to be safe and to feel safe, but he wants that for her, too.

So he runs the fingers of one hand through her damp hair and lets her just pour out everything that she's been holding in; he suspects, though of course he won't say anything to her about it, that it's about a lot more than just Mike or the fact that she's pretty sure titans were once human; it's much more deeply rooted than recent events, and Levi supposes that's the scary part about it all, that grief is always the heaviest emotion.

He's not sure how long Zoë cries, but eventually she settles down and says, "Sorry."

It upsets him, that stupid word, that apology, coming from her—coming from the woman who takes every opportunity to say nice things to him, who always smiles at him as if he's brightened her day or something—as if she thinks she needs to apologize for daring to feel something that's not a smile, as if allowing herself to be human is something to be sorry for.

And he realizes that maybe he's a hypocrite because he never really shows her much of himself (but aren't they all hiding behind a wall of some kind these days?) and she probably thinks, sometimes, that he just doesn't feel the things that other people feel, like grief and hope and joy and love—and maybe he doesn't, maybe what he feels are muted compared to what other people deal with, but he still feels them, sometimes: every single one of them. And when she feels them, well, it's never a burden for him; it's just a reminder that's they're all just human in the end.

"No," is what he says in response to her apology, but even he's not entirely sure why he's saying it.

(I like who you are, he thinks. Be yourself and don't you dare apologize to anyone for it.)

He's also not sure why he brushes his nose against the top of her head, why he nearly kisses her hair, why something about this situation just feels so _right_ when he _knows_ it's all wrong and terrible and he wishes with all of what he's got left of his heart that Zoë didn't need him, not like this, because he's not especially good at comforting anybody, not even himself, and here she is, face pressed into his shoulder, fingers gripping the back and side of his shirt; she's hurting and he's not sure how to make it stop.

But he has to do what he can _while_ he can, because next time it might be Levi who doesn't come back home, and when Zoë's crying about that, crying over him—and he really hates the thought, because he's just not worth her tears—there won't be anyone else for her to go to for this kind of comfort, if that's what it is he's really offering her right now.

(He doesn't really think about what he'll do if, one day, he returns without her.)

Levi knows he's stupid for wanting Zoë to stay with him, just this night; the request is too selfish to ask, even for him. Here she is, feeling like shit, and he just likes the way she feels in his arms. He just likes the fact that she's offering him some kind of comfort without really realizing it, and he doesn't want to let it go—not her, not yet, not tonight. Maybe not ever.

But as it turns out, he doesn't have to ask her to stay.

She just doesn't _leave_, and it's _that_ that makes him pull her a little closer. After she falls asleep, when she's no longer even consciously aware that he is there and the action only means something to him, he lets himself kiss the top of her head. He feels guilty for enjoying the weight of her head on his shoulder and the way her fingers slowly relax as she falls into dreams, but he knows it's not really these things that make his chest swell with—well, with _something. _It's so much more than that.

(It's the fact that she feels safe with him; that means—well, it means everything.)

* * *

The next morning he wakes up, arms full of her, and when she finally opens her eyes, he calls her 'Hange' again, and 'shitty-glasses' and 'four-eyes' and whatever other stupid nicknames he's assigned her in the six years he's known her.

She takes it in stride as always, smiles at him like he means something to her, and it makes him feel nervous in a stupid sort of way. Levi's not very good with words, and he's never tried to make anyone love him, so he doesn't try now. He decides to just be himself, because that's all he ever expects of Hange, and he likes her for who she is. Free of the warmth of her in his arms, he says what he wants to say like it doesn't fucking matter to him, but his tongue is too thick and he's sure that Hange is perceptive enough to pick up on the amount of emotion he's feeling when he blurts out, "If you need that again, you should come back. I don't mind."

(But what he means is, "I think it might help me, too. Please come back.")

She smiles at him from where she's sitting on his bed, still wearing his shirt, as if she's trying to figure him out, as if she's gauging the depth of his emotions and translating his words into feelings and then into words again.

"Tonight?" she asks.

He tries to push down whatever it is that tries to escape him at that one word, at her eagerness to be with him again so soon; he doesn't expect anything from her; he doesn't even expect her smile, not when the world's gone to shit and none of them are feeling particularly safe. All he really wants from this request is _her_—her presence, that stupid little indent in the bed next to him, the feeling of her head against his shoulder, the smell of her hair. He doesn't need anything else.

"Okay," is all he says, but the way she beams at him makes him think she really does understand him—in ways no one else really does.


End file.
